Mental Wellbeing at Sea: A Prototype to Collect Speech Data in Maritime Settings

Pascal Hecker, Pascal Hecker, Monica Gonzalez-Machorro, Monica Gonzalez-Machorro, Hesam Sagha, Saumya Dudeja, Matthias Kahlau, Florian Eyben, Björn Schuller, Björn Schuller, Björn Schuller, Bert Arnrich

2025

Abstract

The mental wellbeing of seafarers is particularly at risk due to isolation and demanding work conditions. Speech as a modality has proven to be well-suited for assessing mental health associated with mental wellbeing. In this work, we describe our deployment of a speech data collection platform in the noisy and isolated environment of an oil tanker and highlight the associated challenges and our learnings. We collected speech data consisting of 378 survey sessions from 25 seafarers over nine weeks. Our analysis shows that self-reported mental wellbeing measures were correlated with speech-derived features and we present initial modelling approaches. Furthermore, we demonstrate the effectiveness of audio-quality-based filtering and de-noising approaches in this uncontrolled environment. Our findings encourage a more fine-grained monitoring of mental wellbeing in the maritime setting and enable future research to develop targeted interventions to improve seafarers’ mental health.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Hecker P., Gonzalez-Machorro M., Sagha H., Dudeja S., Kahlau M., Eyben F., Schuller B. and Arnrich B. (2025). Mental Wellbeing at Sea: A Prototype to Collect Speech Data in Maritime Settings. In Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: HEALTHINF; ISBN 978-989-758-731-3, SciTePress, pages 29-40. DOI: 10.5220/0013093700003911

in Bibtex Style

@conference{healthinf25,
author={Pascal Hecker and Monica Gonzalez-Machorro and Hesam Sagha and Saumya Dudeja and Matthias Kahlau and Florian Eyben and Björn Schuller and Bert Arnrich},
title={Mental Wellbeing at Sea: A Prototype to Collect Speech Data in Maritime Settings},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: HEALTHINF},
year={2025},
pages={29-40},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013093700003911},
isbn={978-989-758-731-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 2: HEALTHINF
TI - Mental Wellbeing at Sea: A Prototype to Collect Speech Data in Maritime Settings
SN - 978-989-758-731-3
AU - Hecker P.
AU - Gonzalez-Machorro M.
AU - Sagha H.
AU - Dudeja S.
AU - Kahlau M.
AU - Eyben F.
AU - Schuller B.
AU - Arnrich B.
PY - 2025
SP - 29
EP - 40
DO - 10.5220/0013093700003911
PB - SciTePress